Rancher charged with killing illegal immigrant released on bail after Christian website goes live

An Arizona rancher accused of murder, among other things, has been released from custody, thanks in no small part to the kindness of strangers.

George Alan Kelly has been charged with first-degree murder and two counts of aggravated assault after he allegedly shot and killed illegal migrant Gabriel Cuen-Butimea who broke into his property near the US-Mexico border.

All testing took place at Kelly’s ranch just outside the border town of Nogales.

Fox News told Santa Cruz County Sheriff’s Office Deputy Chief Gerardo Castillo that Kelly posted bail on Wednesday.

Initially, Kelly was given a $1 million bail, a rather exorbitant amount that Kelly could not come up with. However, the rancher seemed to be more concerned about his wife and running his ranch than about his own well-being in a prison cell:

“She’s out there alone,” Kelly reportedly pleaded at the court hearing, referring to his elderly wife who had been left to fend for herself. “No one will take care of her, neither the cattle nor the ranch. And I’m not going anywhere. I can’t find a million dollars.”

To some extent, Kelly is right. He couldn’t make a million dollars.

But then the aforementioned strangers intervened.

A crowdsourcing campaign on Christian donation site GiveSendGo (started after GoFundMe kicked Kelly and his supporters to the sidelines) failed to achieve its original goal of lending a helping hand to an Arizona rancher.

Created by “Shannon Pritchard”, it seems like its original $25,000 goal was completely destroyed when people started learning about Kelly’s plight.

“I thank you all for your generosity. This campaign has started to raise 25k and we are almost at 250k! An amazing, wonderful, incredible blessing for the Kelly family. Donations are understandably slowing down, so I’m going to set a new and final goal of reaching the $250,000 mark,” Pritchard wrote in a post on the donations page.

It turns out Pritchard could easily add another $50,000 to her “new and final goal” because Kelly’s GiveSendGo page has raised $327,249 as of this writing.

As of this writing, a separate GiveSendGo page created for Kelly has raised an additional $51,308. (This donation page states a $1,000,000 goal.)

The entire Kelly trial was a saga of ups and downs as new details surfaced and both sides presented their positions.

For the prosecution, Kelly was presented as a dangerous person who shot a fleeing man in the back without hesitation.

“Mr. Kelly shot an unarmed man in the back in an unprovoked assault while he was running for his life. There was no warning and the victim was more than 100 yards from the defendant’s residence when he was shot,” said Kimberly Hunley. Chief Deputy Attorney for Santa Cruz County.

The defense argued that Kelly simply fired warning shots into the air.

But more importantly for the defense, they just want Kelly to get a fair shake.

“The Alec Baldwin case comes to mind as a case where there was an incident, there was a shooting, there was an investigation, and after a long investigation, criminal cases were opened. This is an example of how a criminal case should be handled. This case was not handled that way, Your Honor. This case was first indicted and then investigated,” said Brenna Larkin, Kelly’s lawyer.

Judge Emilio Velasquez upheld Kelly’s $1 million bail, although he changed it from a cash bond to a bond that would have allowed him to list his home as collateral.

The next hearing is scheduled for Friday.